Northern Ireland Market Intelligence Survey - Autumn 2018

Colm Lavery03 October 2018

With continued political uncertainly in Northern Ireland and UK impacting most markets, it is little wonder then that the results of the latest Northern Ireland Market Intelligence survey point to a general cooling of the construction sector across Northern Ireland.

According to the majority of surveyed contractors, the construction market in Northern Ireland is expected to weaken with 60 percent stating the market is getting ‘cooler’. This is a large shift in comparison to our previous Spring 2018 survey, in which only 22.2 percent of surveyed contractors reported the market to be cooling.

It should be said that although key planning decisions are causing delays to major investment across the market, the private sector appears to be taking up some of the slack. The commercial sector is the best performing on average according to our survey results and has been described as both “buoyant” and “highly competitive” resulting in some mixed views in our Q2 2018 survey results. The student residential and hotel sectors are also noted to be among the higher growth areas currently in Northern Ireland.